//------------------------------//
// Gloom 
// Story: Fallout Equestria — S.A.T. 
// by Faindragon 
//------------------------------//

”I can assure you, Mayor Eco, that SAT has kept all environmental and ecological principles that Green Valley deemed necessary in mind for this project. The engine that will supply Stable 31 with electricity is the most ecologically efficient on the market, with an emission intensity at less than zero point zero zero two kilograms per capita. SAT is very proud of this achievement, which is less than a hundred kilos of what Green Valley put out as a standard limit.”
 
My voice echoed slightly in the dim hallway. The stallion next to me, a deep blue earth pony with a dirt green mane and a tree as a cutie mark, had a hard time keeping up with my long strides. He seemed uneasy as he walked, his head slightly lowered and his steps careful. The stable was different from the world above, not as spacious and definitely not as open. But then, of course, a stable was never meant to be a replacement to the real world, marely a shelter in a worst case scenario.
 
“And Stable-Tec?” the mayor spoke up. “Did they follow our principles as well?”
 
I rolled my eyes. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. I’m here solely as a representative of SAT, and therefore I can’t speak for Stable-Tec. You’ll have to ask their representative that question. I’m here to answer the questions you might have about M.A.C., and nothing else.”
 
“I understand,” he said as we stepped up to the elevator. “I take it that I will meet one of their representatives soon?”
 
“I am to take you down to the maintenance and tell you whatever you might want to know about M.A.C. and the system. When you’re ready to move on, Stable-Tec’s representative will be ready to continue the guided tour. I will go with him, and continue to answer any and all questions you might have about SAT.” I pushed on the elevator button and the door slid aside.
 
“What exactly is this mac?” The earth pony stepped into the elevator with me close behind. As soon as I had gotten in, I clicked on the maintenance button and the doors closed again.
 
“M.A.C., or Magical Accumulation Current, is the engine that keeps the entire Stable running,” I explained as the elevator silently started to move.
 
“Is it safe?”
 
“We have deemed it reliable after heavy testing, both in our own facility as well as here. You see, both SAT and Stable-Tec have used it to fuel most, if not all, of the machinery that was used to build this stable. In fact, we don’t believe that it will fault once during a period of five thousand years, should it be necessary to keep it running that long.”
 
Eco became pale at the number. “Five thousand years? How long does Stable-Tec plan on keeping us down here?!”
 
“I can assure you that five thousand years is not a time that is likely. In fact, the Overmare will be able to open the entrance whenever she feels like it, should she deem it safe to do so. Her terminal will be linked to a network of meters placed at various locations in and around Green Valley. This will allow her to monitor the living conditions on the surface. Even if the Overmare decides to open the door, it will stay shut until the meters confirm that conditions on the outside are safe to live in.”
 
“Overmare? That sounds like something of a leader. Tell me you’re joking about a mare holding a stallion’s job,” Eco chuckled slightly at this, but he quickly went silent as he looked at me. “You aren’t joking, are you?”
 
“I’m afraid not. Stable-Tec will decide who leads the Stable.”
 
“But… what will happen to me?”
 
“I’m sorry, but that question is not mine to answer. As I said, I’m only here as a representative of SAT, nothing more.” I couldn’t help but smile at the poor stallion.
 
He stayed silent for the rest of the elevator ride. As the elevator came to a stop, and the door slid open, he shook his head and stepped out first. “Okay then. I guess I can try and understand as much as possible about this anyway, even if I might not run the place,” he said with a weak smile. “This… mac, how does it work?”
 
I paused for a moment before I stepped after him into the hallway leading to the maintenance, a slight smirk at my lips. “I could try to tell you in detail how it works, but then we would be stuck here for the rest of the day. To keep it simple, M.A.C. takes up the magic leftovers that are created whenever a unicorn, or an earth pony or pegasus for that matter, uses magic. These leftovers are then transformed into raw electricity after the needs of the Stable.”
 
“Earth pony and pegasus magic?” the mayor asked as he suddenly stopped, causing me to nearly walk straight into him.
 
“Yes, even we earth ponies or the pegasi have magic. We use it when we work, no matter what we do. A pegasi, on the other hoof, uses their magic to fly. It’s not as powerful as unicorn magic, but it’s enough for our sensitive collectors to gather it,” I said as I walked past him.
 
“Collectors?” He hurried to me. “What collectors?”
 
“Built in every wall and floor, even the ceiling, are small magic collectors. Even as we walk they gather up the magic emitting from us and store it until the M.A.C. needs it. I can assure you, this procedure is completely harmless.”
 
“Store it?”
 
I rounded the last corner and stepped into the engine room. Pausing in the doorframe, I took a deep breath, allowing the fragrance of the forest fill me up. The room was lit up in a soft green color that the rhombus shaped engine in the middle of the room emitted. Thick cords went from the five crystals that stood around the room, each one glowing in a softer green color, to the engine. Three circles slowly rotated around the glass case of the engine, and occasionally a small spark jumped between them and the case. Each time it did, a low sound resembling that of thunder rolled through the room, causing me to wince slightly. The mayor had stopped behind me and looked in awe at the scenery in front of him.
 
“The crystals standing around the chamber are storing vessels, which make sure that the engine always has the magic it needs. The vessels can together have enough magic stored to keep the engine running for twenty five years without any new magic being collected, and it doesn’t take more than a year for a fully working Stable to keep them filled.”
 
“Impressive,” the earth pony breathed, his eyes wide as they wandered around the room. “How is it controlled? What would happen if the vessels were to be destroyed?” ‘
 
I chuckled slightly. “M.A.C. is fully automated. In an event when direct control would be needed, a terminal on the other side of the room can be used to completely cut off M.A.C. from the vessels and start the emergency generators. The vessels are near to impossible to destroy. Should they be destroyed, however, a built in security mechanism will make sure that the magic in the vessel dissipates under controlled forms.”
 
“And this energy has no emissions whatsoever?” the mayor asked, arching an eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe. There has to be some sort of catch.”
 
“The only emission it has is the light you see around you, which is incandescence created during the electricity transforming procedure. There is also the forest fragrance that that you can smell, which we were unable to pinpoint. We did, however, examine it and did a CaMT on it, and found that it was nothing to worry about.”
 
“Camt?”
 
“CaMT, Chemical and Magical test. The results showed small traces, less than one trillionth gram for every cubic meter of air, hydrogen cyanide. These small traces in the air around us are far from enough to cause any harm. In fact, should you stand in this room without any ventilation running, it would take six years for you to notice anything, which would most likely be an increase in lactic acid buildup if you move around too much. It would take another twenty-five years before the cyanide had actually killed you.”
 
“Do you mean that you are poisoning the entire stable? This is outrageous!”
 
“I was just about to come to that point. This entire room will be magically and chemically enforced to remove the traces quickly, and an obligation to wear the specially constructed hazard suits at all time will be enforced. Moreover, the air ventilation system has multiple filters to make sure that no cyanide will escape the maintenance rooms. We at SAT have taken all measure of precautions possible, so that we can give each and every inhabitant of the Stable a worry free environment, without any risk of M.A.C. to interfere negatively in any way.”
 
“Magically enforced? Hazard suits?”
 
Here I had hoped that this would go fast. Silly me... Of course this mayor would want to know everything about the Stable, even if it wouldn’t matter to him later. I could feel my smile straining some.
 
“Basically, every trace of cyanide will be split into other materials, mainly hydrogen, and then used to create other, harmless materials. The hazard suits are nothing but a safety measure that the personnel in here will be wearing all the time, should the cyanide level peak before the security system can take fully care of it. These suits are to be equipped in a special room between the engine room, this room, and the stairs to the rest of the Stable. But you have no need to worry, if the cyanide would peak, this room will be sealed until it’s deemed safe again.”
 
“So you mean that we are practically standing in cyanide?”
 
“You might have gotten a few traces of it into your system, yes. But those small traces are non-lethal, and I want to remind you that the contract you signed free both SAT and Stable-Tec from any liability and prosecution.”
 
“I… I think I have seen enough,” the mayor hurriedly said, taking multiple steps back as he went pale. “Where can I find the representative of Stable-Tec?”
 
“Right this way, mayor,” I said with a genuine smile as I lead him around the M.A.C. towards the room on the other side.
 
Standing inside the room, patiently waiting as she flicked through a deck of cards, stood a young unicorn. At the sound of the door opening, she quickly folded the deck away and turned towards us, a wide smile on her lips.
 
“Mayor Eco, I’m Folder, the representative from Stable-Tec that will show you around. Now, to start our tour. This is the changing room for all maintenance personnel and the room where the Hazard suits are to be contained at all time. The elevator you used to get down here will not be active for anyone else but the Overmare, once the Stable is finished and fully functional.”
 
“About that Overmare—“
 

{U.U}

 
My eyes shot open as the cold water ran down my torso onto the floor. I lay on my side in front of the giant cogwheel door, my heart pounding in my chest. Bolt stood over me with an empty bucket gripped with her magic and a smirk on her face.
 
“Wakey, wakey,” she said with a small laugh as she slammed down the bucket on the floor next to me, causing my ears to ring. “You can’t sleep now.”
 
I moved my hooves up to my ears, trying to stop them from ringing. “Wha…” I tried to speak, but my words ended with a violent cough. I spat out into the bucket, before I continued. “What happened? How long was I out?”
 
“You just kind of fell over. Not sure why, though. But I couldn’t just let you sleep down there, so I ran to get a bucket of water, and here we are. You can’t have been out for more than five minutes,” she added.
 
“You poured water on me?” I asked with a raised eyebrow as I looked at my legs.
 
“I did. And I must say, the look on your face? Priceless!” She laughed. “Now, are you going to get up today?”
 
“You poured water on me? What about my cybernetics--?”
 
Bolt rolled her eyes. “Waterproof. I can’t believe that you have those cybernetics, and still you don’t know anything about them.”
 
I grunted slightly as I rose. From the corner of my eye, I saw something that caused me to stop halfway up. In the bucket I had just spit in, a jade green leaf lay. I blinked in surprise, and when I looked again, it was gone. “I’m starting to see things,” I muttered to myself as I got up completely.
 
“What now?”
 
I thought I saw a leaf in the bucket, but there wasn’t anything there.
 
“Yes, that was only your imagination. I didn’t see anything. What just happened? Did you get a memory back?”
 
I think so. I worked with… This. Or, rather, SAT worked with it. I was a representative from them here to guide the mayor of Green Valley—
 
“The Equestrian Wasteland to Cyborg!” Bolt snapped beside me.
 
I nearly jumped in surprise. “What? What is it?”
 
“Shall we continue? I’d really like to go home today. I’d rather not sleep in these ruins, if I can help it.”
 
“Oh, yea sure,” I said as I stepped towards the Stable door. “But… How do we get past this?”
 
“I might be able to open it from the terminal, should the terminal be connected with the door. I don’t see why the door wouldn’t be connected with the terminal, seeing that it stands here.”
 
“Oh, that should be easy,” Bolt said as she brushed past me and started to work on the terminal.
 
I stopped in surprise and looked at Bolt as her hooves worked the terminal, hesitating slightly every now and then as her eyes wandered the screen. For minutes the only sound in the hallway was the tapping of her hooves against the terminal.
 
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Spitfire remarked. “That or it’s harder than it should be.”
 
You know, not everypony calculates over a thousand problems each second. I smiled slightly.
 
“It doesn’t matter how many calculations I can do. She should have gotten past it by now.”
 
I sighed and walked up to Bolt. She turned around and glared at me as I tapped her lightly on her shoulder. “What? Give me a minute, I’m almost done. Geez, are you impatient or what?”
 
“You were the one who said you wanted to get home today.”
 
She looked at the terminal. “Fine,” she said, taking a step back from the terminal. “If you think you can get in there faster, be my guest.”
 
I rolled my eyes and looked down on the terminal.
 
“That’s… Gross,” Bolt said as the wire rolled out from my eye. “What is that?” She stepped around me with her eyes on the wire, standing way too close for me to plug it in. “Is it a connection wire? It is, isn’t it?”
 
I nodded slightly. “Yep, it is. Now, if you could move so I can connect it?”
 
Bolt shuffled half a step back, her eyes still on the wire. “How does it work?”
 
“I plug it in, and it allows me to work through my eyes,” I said before I took the wire and plugged it in, the blue filter filling my vision and text starting to scroll past.
 
“So it allows you to work with your brain and mind directly, instead of using your hooves? I guess that makes sense, seeing that it would go faster than using your hooves. But for the eye to interact like that, it must be connected to your—“ she suddenly went silent.
 
“What?” I asked.
 
“Well, that was easy,” Spitfire mused as the words stopped, showing a single sentence. ‘Open Stable door Y/N?’
 
“Your eye… It just turned blue. It was orange a second ago. Is it supposed to do that?”
 
“Yes,” I said, causing the sentence to be replaced with a new one reading ‘Stable Door opening, please stand back’. “I don’t know. I can’t see my own eye, you know. Actually, I can’t see anything when I’m connected.”
 
“But you just said yes, can’t you decide?”
 
The filter quickly faded away together with the words, and I lowered my head to remove the wire. “I’m not completely used to controlling the terminals, so I say commands out loud.” The wire quickly reeled in.
 
She opened her mouth to say something, but the loud siren that pierced through the silence interrupted her.
 
I quickly took a couple of step backs. “I wouldn’t stand so close if I was you,” I said as a red warning light suddenly illuminated the room, throwing shadows in every direction.
 
The warning light was followed by multiple low thumps, followed by a screeching sound as the cogwheel shaped door started to move outwards towards us. Bolt hurriedly took a couple of steps back and nearly backed into me. I sunk down on my haunches and tried to protect my ears with my hooves, but they couldn’t suppress the grinding noise of metal against metal. After a painfully long minute, the door came completely loose and rolled to rest on the side, showing a wide room through the cogwheel-shaped entrance.
 
“Seems that you can do something right, at least,” Bolt breathed as her eyes wandered across the newly opened doorway. She hesitated for a moment before she walked towards it. “Hello?” she yelled into the opening. “Is anypony there?”
 
I followed her closely, looking from right to left as I stepped into this new world. A metal railing ending with a small staircase leading up to a platform in height with my head divided the room in two. On the platform, the green light of a terminal spread from a desk, and I could see an opening leading deeper into the Stable. At both sides of the entrance stood a strange device. They were completely metal, which seemed to have been unkempt for years. Both resembled a pillar with a triangular base and a large, strange ‘head’. The head, which was looking down in the floor, had a barrel on each side of a red lens as well as a coil under it, and wires connected every part of it.
 
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Bolt said with raised voice, before she turned to me. “Seems like it’s empty.”
 
“What is that?” I asked, pointing at the pillar.
 
Bolt looked at the pillar, and her eyes suddenly went wide. “Get out!” she screamed.
 
I snapped my eyes to her, and could see from the corner of my eyes how the head slowly started to move upwards. As soon as it was looking straight forward, it started moving from side to side. By now, I was looking right into the red lens of its head. Something started whirring.
 
Without any warning, Bolt violently tugged the revolver from its holster at my leg and fired three rounds at the closest pillar before she jumped out through the entrance again.
 
“Cogwheel! Get out!” My cybernetic limbs didn’t wait, instead they kicked down in the floor hard, causing me to fall onto my side just as a roar filled the small room. The roar was followed by a loud rattle as the rounds fired from both the pillars hit the other pillar or the wall around it, missing me completely. I quickly crawled towards the door, the roaring sound still echoing in the room I left behind.
 
“What is that?!” I yelled over my ringing ears and pounding heart.
 
“Turrets. Automated defense systems. It must have been a long time since they were last active, as slowly as they reacted. That probably saved our lives.”
 
I could still hear them shoot. The fact that they didn’t have any target didn’t seem to bother them at all.
 
“Now what?”
 
“We wait. It seems like I hit it,” Bolt said, her eyes locked at the terminal inside the room.
 
“For what?” I followed her gaze, before I looked back to her. “What are you talking about? What did you hit?”
 
“They aren’t supposed to continue shooting. They should have seen us as terminated once we left their field of vision, and stopped shooting. Or, at least the magazines I’ve read said something like that. They also said that they have this built-in security system. If the lens became damaged, the turret would shoot at anything that moved until they were turned off from the security terminal connected to them.”
 
A loud crack suddenly erupted from the room, ceasing every other sound.
 
“What was that?”
 
“I believe that was one of the turrets being shot to pieces.” Bolt smiled at me. “I guess we’re lucky. These turrets had the security system.”
 
“Is that good?”
 
“Well… the good part is that we have one less to deal with. The bad part is that the one left will shoot at everything that moves, and quicker than it would otherwise.”
 
“Why does there always have to be a bad part?” I asked as I shrunk back on my haunches.
 
“Welcome to the wasteland.” Bolt snorted as she tugged down the revolver in the holster on my leg again. “This was the easy part. I have never seen a turret more than on pictures, so me hitting it like that was lucky. Besides, had they been in good condition, they would have fired directly when we entered the room and had most likely killed us before we had been able to do anything.”
 
“Killed us?” I stuttered as I looked up at the mare.
 
“In best case we would only have been hit by a couple of rounds each, in worst case we would have been dead. Nasty things, really.”
 
“Yea, I got it, we were lucky. But what now?”
 
“Now?” Bolt giggled softly. “Now comes the fun part. You see the terminal on the desk over there?” she asked, pointing at the terminal in question. “I bet my left hoof that it’s a control station for the turrets, as well as for opening and closing the door. I’ll go distract it and try to disable it while you get your shiny metal flank over there and turn it off.”
 
“That… that’s suicidal! I can’t let you do that!” Spitfire protested.
 
I looked between the unicorn and the terminal. “Are you serious?! It will shoot at you!”
 
“Of course it will. But you saw how slowly it reacted earlier. There’s no way it could hit me!”
 
“But… It will shoot!”
 
“Tss, don’t be such a cryborg,” Bolt said, rolling her eyes. “You know what, let’s make a competition out of it. First to disable the turret wins.”
 
“But—“
 
“On your mark, get set, go!” Bolt yelled with glee, before she ran into the room again.
 
I could hear the turret starting to spin up again, and then the rattling sound starting to echo through the room. With a sigh, I rose and peaked in through the entrance.
 
“Don’t you even think about it!”
 
I have to. Bolt darted from side to side in the small room, unable to get any closer to the turret without being hit by the deadly spray. I can’t just let her… I sighed as I started to run towards the stairs, trying to run alongside Bolt and still do a wide circle towards the blown out turret to get further away from the other. The sound of my hooves against the metal nearly drenched out the rattling the bullets from the turret caused.  
 
Spitfire grunted. “You really are a pea-brained idiot, you know that?”
 
I guess. That doesn’t matter right now. You need to get into that terminal and hack the turret before Bolt gets hurt. Can you do that? I asked as I ran up the stairs and slid to a halt before the terminal. I hadn’t been hit by the turret, now I just had to make sure that Bolt wouldn’t either.
 
“Of course I can,” Spitfire reassured me as the wire popped out. Without pausing, I jabbed it into the terminal.
 
The blue filter obscured my vision once again, words whirling past faster than they usually did. Come on, come on! I urged, my heart beating faster. A cry in pain reached my ear over the sound of the turret, but I was unable to see anything when I looked up. Hurry up!
 
“I’m working as fast as I can!” Spitfire yelled as the words came to a halt ’Turrets Deactivated’. “There!”
 
Silence filled the room as I jerked the wire out of the terminal. Barely had the blue filter disappeared before I moved around the desk and started to run down the stairs. On the floor, with her sides heaving up and down and a trickle of blood running from a wound in her leg, Bolt laid.
 
“Bolt! Are you okay?”
 
“Can’t you see the bullet wound, you idiot?! Couldn’t you be a little faster?” she snarled as she looked up at me, her features softening some. “Just… give me a minute, okay? No need to worry.”
 
I picked up one of my last health potions and put it down next to her. She flashed me a thankful smile, before her horn started to glow softly. Without hesitating, she tore out the bullet from her leg, grimacing and giving out a small cry as she did.
 
“You know, there is no need to use the entire bottle. Instead, it is enough to bathe the wound with the potion, like Precious did with Dust’s wound when we met them.”
 
I scooped up the health potion with my limbs and poured a small tendril over the wound. As the ruby red liquid connected with the wound it started to close up, the skin and muscles crawling back.
 
“It was just a lucky shot,” the unicorn muttered as she grimaced.
 
“It didn’t hit you anywhere else?” I asked, my eyes searching for any other bullet hole.
 
“That thing?” Bolt snorted. “It wouldn’t even be able to hit a barn door if it stood in the way. I took a misstep, that’s all.” She kept her eyes where the bullet had penetrated as she rose, groaning slightly. “It will take hours to get that blood away.”
 
“Why did you do it?”
 
“Get blood on my coat? I didn’t do that. It just happened.” She smiled at me as she started to move towards the stairs to the platform.
 
Sighing, I followed her. “No, why did you run in like that?”
 
“If I hadn’t, you would have tried to talk me out of it, right?”
 
“I--” I hesitated. If I had been able to talk her out of it, would I have done that? The mere thought about Free made me shiver. I really didn’t want to find out if his threat had been empty or not. “Yes, I would have,” I lied. “Or, at least try to make you do it differently.”
 
“Exactly. So I forced your hoof.” She walked past the desk and continued towards the opening that led deeper into the Stable. “Besides, I could have gotten back out in a few steps if you didn’t follow me.”
 
I walked after her into the small hallway. “Next time you could at least let me try to get a word in?”
 
“You got plenty of words in. It’s just that I didn’t really like any of them.” She looked through an opening in the wall, which a sign above it told me was an Emergency Medical Lab. Without pausing, she stepped in, her body bouncing slightly as she walked. “Where do you want to start? Who knows what kind of stuff we’ll find down here? This is so exciting!”
 
“Exciting? Exactly how is this exciting?” I followed her into the small room, and looked at her as she poked around the different drawers and cases in the room.
 
The room wasn’t very big. A few beds stood alongside one wall. A desk stood out from one of the other walls, a terminal standing among clipboards and a single lamp, which had long since burnt out. The green light from the terminal illuminated the back of the wall, where a planch with the text “Trust in the Overmare, Work for the Overmare” hung.
 
Bolt stopped what she was doing and looked up at me. “How this—“ She motioned with her hoof at the things around her. “Is exciting?”
 
I nodded. “Yeah, and what is a Stable anyway?”

“The hard part first,” Bolt started as she went back to poke through every corner she could find in the small room, occasionally dropping something into her saddlebags. “A Stable was basically a giant shelter, created to host and protect thousands of ponies during the war. They were independent, had their own water and food supply. So the exciting part,” Bolt said as she walked up to the terminal. “Is what we can learn! This place is basically a source of knowledge about how life was during the war and how it was in a Stable! You of all ponies should understand how exciting it is to learn about the past, with you looking for your memories and all!” She paused as she glared at the terminal. “Besides, who knows what pre-war tech we might find down here?!” She looked between me and the terminal. “Would you mind taking care of that?”
 
“Let me get this straight,” I said as I walked up to the terminal. “You wanted to get into the ruins just to get down here and find out how ponies lived during the war?”
 
Bolt moved to the side as I looked down at the terminal and the wire emerged. She gently took the wire in her magic and tucked it into the terminal.
 
"What I really want to do is find any pre-war tech that might help Green Valley, or least something I can use to trade." She hesitated as Spitfire started to work with the terminal. "But I do want to know how life was like before -- before the Wasteland. You say you don't remember what it was like, but... It had to be better than what life is like now. There hasn't been a week that I can remember where somepony hasn't been murdered or disappeared."

Her voice dropped and wavered slightly.

"Like Trigger." She turned to look at me, confusion in her eyes. "He died less than a week ago... But there are so many ponies dying in the Wastes that he's 'just another pony'. He was so close to me that I would call him my brother, but when he died, I didn't feel anything. He just... Disappeared..." She sighed. "Sorry, I... I don't know what came over me."
 
I could feel tears in my eye as the words stopped and the blue filter disappeared. “The dead live on. In your memory, in the memoires of the ones they loved. Even if they aren’t with us in flesh, they will be here in spirit,” Spitfire said.
 
What?
 
“Talk to her, Cogwheel. She needs it. The terminal can wait.”
 
I gently tugged the wire out from the terminal and walked over to where she had slid down on her haunches. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
 
“Yeah, I’m fine… It’s just…” She looked away and took a deep breath. “The day that Trigger died, I was scavenging in the ruins. It was like seeing into another world. I found old books that had been left behind, diaries and journals. They talked about pain and suffering, but also happiness and joy. Some of them talked about the dead, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, friends and loved ones. How they were missed years after they had passed. It made me think. About the differences between my world and the worlds described in the books. There is nothing but pain and suffering out there. Is it so strange I want proof that this hasn’t always been the case? That there was a time when everything was better? That I want to know more about that time?”
 
I sat down next to her. “No, I guess it isn’t strange,” I started. She looked back up at me, a hint of tears in her eyes. “Since I woke up, the same thing has bothered me. I don’t remember how you are supposed to feel when someone dies, but completely ignoring it can’t be healthy either. After all, the ones around us are a piece of ourselves. And when they are gone? They are still there. Maybe not in flesh, but in spirit. In our memories. And as long as we have those memories…” I sighed, remembering all too well that I didn’t have memories, but yet knew that I had lost someone. “We can remember the times we had with the ones who have now left us.”
 
“Maybe you’re right,” the unicorn sniffed. “But how am I supposed to feel? Death is so common out here… I can remember my father crying when he told me about my mother’s death. I can remember that I cried at times, but never for long. It just…” she didn’t finish the sentence.
 
I sighed. “I can’t tell you how you are supposed to feel. That is something that only you can know. But I guess that we all feel different about the loss of a loved one.” I looked up from the unicorn. “Grieve the dead, because that is a life lost.”
 
“I guess you’re right.”
 
I stayed there next to her, my eyes looking into the distance and my mind wandering, not touching a subject for more than a second before it continued on. But one thing returned to my mind, all the time. A voice from the first memory I had. I know that life’s been hard for you after your wife and son’s passing. The voice of Doctor Honey Pod. Once, I had had a wife and son. What had happened to them? How had they been, who were they?
 
A sudden nudge at my side caused me to tear my eyes away from the wall and look down at the unicorn next to me.
 
“The terminal?” she asked with a weak smile as she pointed at it with a hoof.
 
Rising, I nodded slightly and walked over to it.
 
“I never thought about asking,” Bolt said as I tugged the wire into the terminal. “What’s your name?”
 
I sighed as the words once again started to flow past my vision. “I can’t remember my birth name, but I took the name Cogwheel when I woke up.”
 
“Cogwheel… That’s better than going around and call you cyborg all the time, I assume.” She laughed, but I could hear how forced it was.
 
“Or cryborg,” I said as the words stopped before my eyes. She laughed at my words, a more genuine laugh, although it still sounded forced.
 
“Thanks, Cogwheel,” she said.
 
“You’re welcome,” I said, before I added. “I’m in.”
 
“You are?” she said. I heard how she hurried up on her hooves. “What does it say?”
 
I looked over the different alternatives. Medicine Journals didn’t seem like the subject Bolt was here for, and I didn’t even look twice at Death Journals. But there was a third option. “Logs,” I said, and the words disappeared. Nearly directly, a long list of entries took their places. How many are there?
 
“Seven thousand nine hundred and fifty nine. Nearly two entries each day for twenty years.”
 
“What does it say?” Bolt asked. “The screen is blank, I can’t see anything!”
 
“There are nearly eight thousand logs here. I don’t think we have time for them all. Not if we want to get out of here today, or even this week.” How?
 
“I have been going through most of them. I think they, since there were at least two or three doctors here each day, became bored and started to write these logs. It looks like they made it into a game of some sort…”
 
Bolt was silent for a moment. “Can’t you… read like, two or three, then jump over a couple of hundred before you read two or three more?”
 
“I can pick out the ones you might find interesting,” Spitfire offered. The list of logs disappeared, and sentences started to build up over my vision instead.
 
“I can do that.” I nodded slightly as I skimmed through the log. “The first one seems to be a message from Stable-Tec. Welcome, to Stable 31’s Emergency Medical Lab. The Emergency Lab is to be occupied at all time, regardless of occasion. Yes, this includes, but is not limited to, Hearth’s Warming Eve…”
 

{ô-o}

 
“Making the score twenty – twenty five, still in your favor. The next point goes to whoever first encounters a patient with a bullet hole in any area of the right side of the body. The challenge doesn’t start before your first duty time in two days.” I finished the latest of the numerous logs I had been reading through during the last hour. My throat was dry after reading for so long, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at the strange notes. Most of them had, like this, been a competition between the two bored doctors on duty, while others had been about the stable in general.
 
Bolt had been silent most of the time, and had only commented briefly or stifled a laugh at the often ridiculous challenges. “Do you honestly want me to believe that they found a patient that had got stuck in a lampshade?” She joined in my chuckling. “That’s just ridiculous.”
 
“I… I think you should read these, Cogwheel. Something isn’t right here. The last entries… amongst the hundreds of last ones, there are corrupted files everywhere. I only managed to extract a few of them, but…”
 
I stopped chuckling. What do you mean?
 
“Is something wrong, Cogwheel?” Bolt asked worriedly.
 
“Read for yourself… I don’t think we should be here.”
 
The log I had just read was quickly replaced by another, dated nearly a year after the last. “Nothing… yet. Give me a minute.” I silently started to read the log.
 
Yet another disappearance tonight, this time a young stallion who didn’t come home after hanging out with his friends. He was reported missing this morning. Security started searching immediately. Can’t blame them after all the disappearances these last few months. They scanned the entire stable after the poor stallion’s PipBuck tag. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like every other time. The Overmare has stated that security will patrol the corridors at night, to keep us safe.
 
As soon as I had finished the log, another one popped up.
 
The Overmare is trying to calm us down, saying that the disappearances are being investigated. Sure, call me a fool, but I trust her. But the investigations aren’t doing anything to stop it. In two weeks another five ponies have gone missing, one of them a security mare from the night guard that the Overmare established.
 
“This…” I was interrupted by a third log coming up.
 
“What is it, Cogwheel?”
 
The Overmare has decided to open the stable door. She has deemed the stable unsafe after all the unexplained disappearances. According to her the surface is clean enough for us to leave. Chief, that idiot, is still trying to talk her out of it.
 
The last log disappeared, and was replaced by a single line. May Celestia watch over us all.
 
I shivered as the filter disappeared and the wire unplugged without me touching it, slowly reeling into my eye again.
 
“What’s wrong?” Bolt looked up at me.
 
I could only stare at the terminal, where the last line stood in yellow letters against a black background. May Celestia watch over us all.
 
My heart started to pound faster. Something about this wasn’t right. “Ponies disappeared,” I stammered as I tore my eyes away from the terminal. “They were never found, and the Overmare deemed it unsafe here. I don’t think—“
 
I saw something moving in the corner of my eye, and quickly spun around. Before me hung the poster, but the words were definitely not the ones that had been there when we entered the room. “The Overmare is dead. Long live the Overmare,” I whispered the words. They echoed in the small room, slowly gaining in strength and twisting my voice. In the end, I had to bring up my hooves to protect my ears from the sound.
 
I don’t know how long I lay there before Bolt walked up and nudged me in the side. “It’s gone,” she said, looking wide eyed at the room around her. “What was that?”
 
“I… I don’t know,” I whimpered as I looked up at the poster again. The words were once again as they had been when we entered. “And I don’t want to stay and find out.” I quickly rose and walked towards the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
 
“But—“ Bolt started, before she seemed to think better of it and instead followed me.
 
Barely had we stepped outside the room before a crackle could be heard from the hallway around us. I hurried up my steps as I looked around me, trying to find the source of the sudden sound. The crackle was soon followed by a panic-stricken female voice.
 
“This is the Overmare. All inhabitants of Stable 31 are to evacuate immediately! This is not a drill! The security personnel are keeping… whatever it is at bay, but we don’t know how long we will be able to. Special personnel have been sent to each living quarter to make sure that none are left behind, but you have to hurry! We don’t know how long—“
 
Together, we galloped down the hallway back to where we came, the voice echoing around us. As suddenly as it had started, it ended. The crackling sound took its place, before it also disappeared. Together with the crackling, the light disappeared. I stopped abruptly, and Bolt ran into me, causing us both to tumble over.
 
“What happened?” I asked, my voice high pitched, as I tried to get off her and get up. “Who was that?”
 
“I don’t know.” Bolt yelled before she let out a scream of pain. “Be careful!”
 
“Sorry,” I said as I got up to my hooves. I noticed that, while I couldn’t see completely, it was still possible for me to make out shapes, like Bolt who rose next to me and the entrance further away.
 
“Can’t see shit in this pitch darkness,” Bolt growled beside me. A red lamp started to light up the part of the entrance room that I could see from here.
 
“What do you me—“ I began to ask, but was cut off by the high screeching that emerged from the other room.
 
Bolt threw a horrified look at me, and I was pretty sure that I returned it as we started to run towards the Stable door.
 
As I reached the stairs down, the whole floor vibrated and a low thump filled the room as the cogwheel shaped door came to rest.
 
Sealing us inside Stable 31.
 

{O.o}

 
“This is the Overmare speaking. For your safety, non-security personnel are to stay inside their room until further notice. If you are seen outside your dorm without permission, force may and will be used to see you safely back. This is not a drill. Stay in your room until further notice. All security personnel are to directly report to Security Chief for further orders. Don’t worry, Stable 31. Your well-being is in safe hooves,” the calm, feminine voice informed me. Again. “This is the Overmare speaking…”
 
“That repeating message is starting to get annoying,” Bolt grunted besides me.
 
“Yea.” I could only agree, but stopped myself from nodding so that I wouldn’t pull out the wire connecting me with the turret’s terminal.
 
After the Stable door had closed, both Bolt and I had started to beat on it with our hooves, screaming to be let out. Of course, it hadn’t opened just because we wanted it to. Why would it? At least the lights had switched on again once the door was closed.
 
After some wailing, Bolt had asked me about the terminal. The same terminal we now stood before and hoped could open the door.
 
“Open Stable Door,” I read from the blue filter over my eyes. It gave me a yes or no option. “Yes, I’m sure. Just let me out already!”
 
The option faded away and was replaced by a single line of text. I stared at the text in disbelief. “No, no, no, no! What do you mean that the option is disabled?!” I screamed to the terminal in front of me. “It can’t be disabled! Who would disable it?!”
 
Right on cue, the repeating message started over again. “This is your Overmare speaking.”
 
I unplugged the wire and rested my forehead against the cold desk.
 
“So we can’t get out?” Bolt asked, earning nothing but a grunt in response.
 
She sighed as I heard her sit down. “Now what? I mean, if you can disable the option then you must be able to enable it from somewhere.”
 
In fact, the Overmare will be able to open the entrance whenever she feels like it, should she deem it safe to do so. The words from the memory echoed in my head. “You can,” I said and raised my head from the desk. I dully noted how the message repeated again. “From the Overmare’s office.”
 
Bolt gave me a sidelong glance. “How do you know that?”
 
“I… I was here, a long time ago. As a representative of SAT. I… remembered. When I lost consciousness outside the door. I had this… dream. It was like a memory, and I walked these halls. Long ago, when it just had been finished. In the memory, I mentioned something about how the Overmare could open the entrance whenever she felt like it.”
 
Bolt looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You lost consciousness, and just happen to remember something like that? Do you really want me to believe that? I’m not stupid, Cogwheel.”
 
“What?”
 
“If you want to try and fool me, then at least make sure your story adds up. You don’t know what a Stable is, although you remembering being in one, and even working with it?”
 
“I was only in the maintenance area and told some pony named Mayor Eco about the basics of it. He started to ask questions, and I answered that they wouldn’t have to be here forever. That the Overmare could open the door.”
 
Bolt snorted. “And you want me to believe that?”
 
“It’s true!”
 
“Whatever,” she said and rolled her eyes. “If you want to continue with your lies, feel free to do so.”
 
“I’m not—“
 
“The important thing is that we have a way out of here.” She didn’t give me a single chance to defend myself. “Do you know where the Overmare’s office is?”
 
“No. And I didn’t lie.”
 
She rose from the floor, completely ignoring my comment. “Then we’ll just have to figure out where it is. It shouldn’t be that hard to find.”
 
I looked after her as she started to walk towards the entrance. “Are you coming?” she asked, without as much as looking back.
 
Sighing, I walked after her into the hallway, all the time followed by the calm voice of the Overmare that informed me that my well-being was in good hooves. It was first after I had passed the Emergency Medical Lab that I caught up with Bolt.
 
“Do you know anything about this place?” Bolt asked as we turned around a corner.
 
“Not more than that Green Valley wanted it to follow some kind of ‘Emission Standard’ and that the Overmare had an elevator down to the maintenance, where a M.A.C. engine stood.”
 
“Mac engine? I’ve never heard of something like that,” Bolt said, barely stopping at a T-junction, directly turning right. Towards the atrium, living quarters and Overmare’s office if the signs were correct.
 
“Some kind of device that created electricity out of magic.”
 
“Is that even possible?” She paused in the middle of a step and looked at me, before she continued walking. “I mean, sure, if you use magic to spin a wheel or something like that, but just create electricity out of magic?”
 
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Apparently it works.”
 
The silence that lingered in the air around us as we walked down the hallway was only interrupted by the soft echoing of our hoofsteps and the ever repeating message from the Overmare.
 
She could repeat that our well-being was in safe hooves however many times she wanted, but it wouldn’t help me feel that what she said was true. The absence of life spoke against the clean and well-kept hallway that was beyond the entrance. Not a grain of dust covered the floor tiles my hooves walked upon and not a stain was to be seen on the dull walls, but whoever kept our surrounding in its impeccable state stayed out of sight.
 
More than once, my skin crawled and I could feel the hair standing on my neck. But if anything was there to cause me to feel that way, whenever I looked, it was gone.
 
Bolt, on the other hoof, didn’t look unnerved at all. If she did, she didn’t show any sign of it as she walked on, her eyes forward. She didn’t even react to me repeatedly looking back. It didn’t take long before a door hindering our way proved that we had reached the end of the hallway. A sign above the door read “Atrium”.
 
“Didn’t the signs say that this was the way to the Overmare’s office?” I asked as Bolt stepped forward, eyeing the door.
 
She brought forward a hoof and tapped against a button on the side of the door. “It did,” she confirmed as the door glided into the ceiling with barely any sound. “But it also pointed out other places. I guess that the way continues from the atrium.”
 
The atrium was a spacious room, the ceiling reaching up for several meters. There was a rail on both sides about halfway up to the ceiling, probably from rooms on floors above us. Multiple catwalks connected the two railways. On the opposite wall from the hallway, with its lower base at the same height as the catwalks, there was a big window.
 
For a second, I thought I could see something on the other side of the dark tinted window, but then I blinked and whatever it was disappeared again. “Did you see that?”
 
“What?”
 
Bolt looked back at me without stopping. “See what?”
 
I stopped and pointed towards the window. “There was somepony in the window.”
 
“Nothing’s there,” the unicorn said after looking at the window for a second. “It’s just your imagination.”
 
“I-I swear. Something was there!”
 
Bolt just continued walking, leaving me standing alone staring up at the window. I swear I saw something. I thought as I tore my eyes away from the window, shivering slightly. There was something there.
 
“It was likely just a piece of curtains that moved or something. Nothing to be afraid of,” Spitfire soothed.
 
Yes. A pair of curtains. That was it. I chuckled nervously as my eyes wandered over the rest of the room. Spare for a few couches and a billiard table with its necessary adjunct lying tidy on it, as if someone just had prepared for a game, the room was empty. Multiple ways lead out of here, the signs above them pointing to locations as “Living Quarters”, “Cafeteria”, “Security”, “Utility” and “Overmare’s Office”.
 
“Wait for me!” I shouted to Bolt, who nearly had reached the door to the Overmare’s office, and hurried up my steps to catch up with her.

Without even waiting for me to catch up, the unicorn moved her hoof to the instrument panel for the door. After nothing happened, she looked down at the panel. “Locked?” She moved her head closer to the panel. “Or just not willing to work?” She pressed the button again, but the door stayed as closed as it had before.
 
“Locked? What do you mean locked?” I asked quickly. “Can’t we get in?”
 
Bolt rolled her eyes as she took a step back from the door. “Locked, we can’t open it. Or it might be malfunctioning, hard to tell.”
 
“We can’t get in there, then?”
 
“Not from this door we can’t. Where did you say that elevator was? Maybe we can use that one.”
 
“Maintenance.” I hastily looked around me. “But how do we get there? None of these doors seem to lead to it.”
 
“We could go back to the first junction and turn left instead of right. The sign there pointed towards maintenance. But I’m certain there’s a faster way from one of these doors.” She spun around on the spot. “But which one?”
 
”Wouldn’t it be better just to go back to maintenance? I don’t want to be here.”
 
Bolt rolled her eyes as she stopped and started to walk towards the door marked “Utility”. “I promise you, one of these ways will lead to Maintenance, and faster so than going back.”
 
“But—“
 
“Tell you what,” she sharply interrupted without even looking back at me. “If we don’t find another way there through this door, we go back instead. Does that sound good?”
 
“I don’t have any choice, do I?” I sighed as I hurried to catch up with her.
 
“If what she says is true, then it might be worth taking some time to find a faster way down. There is only four ways, and as long as you turn back quickly… I think you might spare time going through at least one of these places,” Spitfire interfered. “And, in worst case, you can turn back to that junction and go from there.”
 
I just want to get out of here. I felt a shiver running down my back as the thought of Free came back to my mind unbidden. For a brief second, the uncertainty I felt for the Stable tried to overcome the fear I had felt in the glade. Get the ornament, then get out of here. I corrected myself. As it was now, I would have to go through maintenance either way.
 
“You’re right, you don’t,” Bolt said as she brought her hoof forward and pressed the button to the door, which glided open without a sound and revealed another hallway. Without another word, Bolt continued forward and I hurried after her, looking nervously from side to side.
 

{>.>}


 

“Can we go back now?” I asked as we entered the Atrium for the third time, this time coming from the Cafeteria. “We might have been out of here if we had gone to maintenance the first time.”
 
“Oh, quit your whining,” Bolt said as she floated some sugar bombs from the carton she held in her magic and happily started to chew on them. “Not counting that irritating repeating message, there hasn’t been anything bad happening since we got locked in.” She peered down the carton, before she threw it away. “We found a great amount of trading goods without encountering anything or putting our lives at stake. This is scavenging as it should be! Easy as pie.”
 
Utility had been little more than rooms filled to the brim with, in my eyes, junk. Bolt, on the other hoof, had started to tear down things from the shelves they had once rested upon and placed them in our saddlebags. At times, she had dug through the bags and thrown out something, only to replace it with something more valuable, to the point where the saddlebag were heavy on my back. But we hadn’t found any way towards maintenance, and Bolt had decided to go on towards the cafeteria, completely ignoring my protests.
 
Even though I didn’t want to go to the cafeteria, a part of me was happy that she hadn’t listened to me. We had found food in the cafeteria, and although we already had food with us we had decided to take what we found instead. Other than that, the cafeteria had been like the other rooms and hallways we had been in -- well kept, tidy and devoid of any life.

I could feel my skin crawl as I looked around at the cleaned floor. The house I had stayed at my first night outside, a house that had been standing abandoned at the mercy of the weather, both wind and rain, since the end of the war, had been dust filled. But a Stable that had been abandoned for goddesses-know-how-long?
 
“Is it meant to be this clean?” I asked. “I mean… You would think that a Stable that has been abandoned would be dustier.”
 
Bolt stopped in the middle of a step and looked around herself, before she shrugged and walked on. “I don’t know. Maybe Stables got some kind of automatic cleaning device?”
 
“Automatic cleaning device?”
 
“I don’t know,” Bolt said as she once again looked around as she stepped up to the door towards the security section. “But it’s actually kind of nice.”
 
“Nice?” I asked in disbelief as the door to the security glided open, revealing the hallway beyond. “How is it nice?”
 
“It’s a change from the dust and grim I’m used to.” She stepped into the hallway, and I followed after her.
 
“You aren’t thinking it’s strange at all?”
 
“Not really,” Bolt said as she opened another door, placed halfway down the hallway, and walked into it. “With the technology needed to create the prosthesis you have to be able to walk, don’t you think that you could create a device that automatically cleans your surroundings?”
 
“I… guess,” I admitted as I followed her.
 
The room behind the door was basically a bigger office. A number of desks, each one with a broken terminal on it, or at least one that didn’t emit the green light I was used to from terminals, stood in neat rows on one side of the room. On the other side stood multiple lockers, the clean metal reflecting the light of the lamps. The other side of the room, past the desks, was another section divided from the office by a wall made of bars. That section was cut into smaller rooms by walls in the same manner. None of the smaller rooms had anything else than a bed inside it. Behind the desks was another door.
 
“Could you look through the desks?” Bolt asked as she eyed the metal lockets. She floated up a screwdriver and something that looked like a hairpin from her saddlebags. “I will look through these.”
 
I looked at the desks. “What should I look for?”
 
“Anything that looks valuable,” she said, waving me off with a hoof. “I’m sure you saw what I took from utility. See if you can find anything like that.”
 
“Small objects with as much metal as possible on them. Got it.”

I walked over and started to search through the desk. Barely had I been able to look through half of the first desk’s drawers, before the sound of Bolt muttering something under her breath caused me to look up quickly. She had moved over to the next locker, leaving the first locker seemingly untouched.
 
“Aren’t you going to check the first one?” I asked as I went back to the drawers.
 
“There wasn’t anything important in it,” she said sourly.
 
“I couldn’t hear her opening or closing the locker. Shouldn’t that have made any sound?” Spitfire said, before she snickered.
 
What so funny?
 
“Oh, nothing.”
 
Nothing? You had to find something funny, I thought as I continued to the next desk. Spitfire only snickered again, and I decided that it wasn’t worth to try and get an answer out of her. Quickly I looked through the desks, without finding anything of value at all. When I was done, I looked up to see that Bolt had finished as well. She walked back from the last locker, three objects that looked like bigger version of the revolver around my leg floating after her and into her saddlebags.
 
“Found anything?” I asked, as I looked down the row with lockers. Only three of the fifteen lockets were open, including the one she had just stepped from.
 
“Some pistols and ammunition.” Bolt answered as she walked towards me. “And you?”
 
“Nothing. Most of the desks were empty and the others only had papers in them.”
 
Bolt walked past me and up to the door behind the desks. “What about the other lockers?” I asked as I followed her.
 
“They were empty,” Bolt sneered as she opened the door. “And that’s that.”
 
I could hear Spitfire snicker in the back of my mind as we stepped through the door.
 
“Chief. Come in Chief.”
 
I stopped as I heard the voice coming from nowhere, drenching out the repeating message from the Overmare. I quickly looked around me, tried to find the source of the voice. The room wasn’t very big, and it was very scantily furnished. Beside the desk, which took up most of the cramped room, and the cushion behind it, the room was empty. On the desk stood a terminal, lightning up the back of the room in its green glow. Next to the terminal laid something that looked like a bracelet. I looked back at Bolt, but her eyes were only on the bracelet.
 
“What is it, Sentry?” A darker, impatient voice boomed from the bracelet. I could hear what sounded like gunfire in the background.
 
“It’s the Overmare, sir. She has sealed her office and refuses to answer through the intercom.” The first voice said as Bolt walked past me.
 
“What are you doing?” I asked as I stepped after her.
 
She hushed me down as the second voice returned. “She did what? What is that mare thinking?! We need to evacuate the Stable immediately!”
 
“Your orders, Sir?”
 
More gunshots were heard, as well as multiple ponies yelling to each other.
 
“Sir?”
 
“Use my terminal. You can remove the seal from there.” I could hear how the second voice shouted out retreating orders, before his voice came back to full. “Hurry up. I don’t know how long we can keep it away!”
 
“What’s the password?”
 
I heard a last bullet shot, before a crackle exploded from the device and everything went silent.
“Sir? I need a password to operate your terminal. Sir?”

The voice disappeared from around us, and the Overmare’s returned to fill its void. Bolt stepped up to the desk and looked down at the strange bracelet laying there, her eyes wide as plates. She moved around it, as if the desk was a pedestal only to empathize the bracelet. The bracelet gleamed softly in the light of the terminal. She brought forward a hoof, as if to scoop it up, but stopped it barely a couple of inches from the metal device.
 
“What are you doing?” I asked as I stepped up to her. “Shouldn’t we try to get out of here?”
 
She tore her eyes away from the bracelet and looked at me. “Getting out of here? Yea, right. Could you… try to get into the terminal?” Her eyes returned to the bracelet. “I’m just going to…” she didn’t finish the sentence.
 
I rolled my eyes as I walked over to the terminal and plugged myself in. Do you think you can get in? It is the terminal of the head of security after all.
 
“I cannot guarantee anything, but I will do my best,” Spitfire reassured me as the filter with its words covered my vision.
 
“What is that anyway?” I asked as Spitfire started to work.
 
“A PipBuck,” Bolt said slowly. “A Pre-War multi-tool. I knew that they were distributed to the Stables… found some magazines briefly touching the subject. But seeing one in real life? This…” I could hear her take a deep breath. “The audio we heard was likely an audio log stored on it. If I remember correctly, you could use it to store any and all information, play logs, connect with terminals like you do with your eye and… anything you can think of, really.”
 
“So that was just a recording?”
 
“I think it was. The big question is, what triggered it? Maybe some auto setup when someone gets close to it.”
 
“I’m in,” Spitfire said as the words disappeared and rearranged to a single sentence ‘Welcome, Chief’.
 
“Already?” I blurted out.
 
“What did you say?” Bolt asked.
 
“I’m in,” I quickly said. Was it that easy?
 
“The password was one two three four five. No joking.” Spitfire deadpanned. “Whoever this chief of security was, he didn’t know anything about computer security.”
 
 “Good, good. Can you open the door to the Overmare?”
 
“Give me a sec, I will try,” I answered. Can you?
 
“I don’t know. Something seems—“
 
Spitfire’s voice disappeared, and words started to form sentences on my filter. “What’s happening?” I asked.
 
“Cogwheel? What’s wrong?”
 
“I… I don’t know. Everything was replaced by… something that looks like a log.”
 
Spitfire? What happened?
 
“I don’t know. I don’t have any control over it.”
 
I looked over the text. What is this?
 
“It’s one of the logs of the Chief. An early one, I believe. I’m not a hundred percent sure though…”
 
Please say that you can remove it. I thought as I looked at the words. I just want to get out of here.
 
“I’m afraid not. I’m working on it.”
 
I can’t just… unplug it?
 
“You can, but I can’t promise that it won’t come up again once you plug me in again. Just give me some time to work around it.”
 
As Spitfire worked on the terminal, I quickly realized a small problem. I couldn’t look away from the text. Wherever I averted my eyes, it was there, taunting me with its bare presence.  Closing my eyes, I tried to get my heart to slow down. I really didn’t like to not be able to control what was happening.
 
“What does it say?” Bolt asked. “Is it something about the life of the stable? Can you read it? And why are you closing your eyes?”
 
“Hu?” I asked, opening my eyes again.
 
“You said something about a log? What does it say?”
 
I looked back to the beginning of the log, and started to read it. “The small foal was later found, alive and sound, in the maintenance area, sitting and talking to the engine. None of the workers knew how she had gotten there, neither had anyone seen her during the hours she was missing. Seeing how she didn’t wear a Hazard suit, she shouldn’t have been able to enter the room. When she was later asked how she ended up there, she said that it brought her there as she pointed at the engine. The foal has been returned to her parents.”
 
As soon as I finished reading, the sentences disappeared and were replaced with new ones. “What?” Did you do something? I asked Spitfire as I eyed the new text. Not that I could do anything else, but.
 
“No, I didn’t do anything. It just… Changed.”
 
 “What happened?”
 
“The log changed to something else without me doing anything.”
 
“Is it something more about the life in the stable?”
 
I eyed the short log, before I started to read it. “An old stallion was reported missing earlier today. As usual, we first tried to track him with his PipBuck tag. However, there seems to be some interference in the maintenance area. Instead of pointing towards the tag, the marker was reported to start spinning wildly. The pony in charge decided to ignore the maintenance area for the moment, and the stallion was later found in the atrium. The stallion, who seemed a little at loss but otherwise healthy, asked the officer where he was. He was quickly returned to his wife.”
 
“I’m having trouble with getting around it,” Spitfire said as the log once again was replaced with another one.
 
Without even thinking, I started to read the next log. “Another pony disappeared tonight, a young unicorn mare. The group who was searching for the mare followed the marker to the maintenance area, but as soon as the group entered, the marker started to spin wildly, and it was impossible to pinpoint it. A sweep was made of the room, but the boys didn’t find anything.”
 
I stopped as I realized what I was reading.
 
“What’s the matter?” Bolt asked.
 
“This… this is from one of those disappearances.” I read the last line from the log. “Lemon Bloom was declared dead after the fourth sweep of the Stable. Our thoughts and condolences go to her family.”
 
As I had finished reading, the log was replaced with multiple options. One of them was the one I had been looking for. “Unseal Overmare’s Office.” At my words, the options were replaced with a new line, and the repeating message suddenly ended. “Seal removed. Distress call and broadcast canceled.”
 
“That means we can get to the office now?” Bolt asked as I tugged out the wire.
 
“I think so,” I said as the blue filter disappeared. Bolt sat on the other side of the desk, her eyes on the device in front of her. Her hoof tapped gently on the floor.
 
“Good, good.”
 
A rumble, low at first but quickly working up in noise, filled up the empty room after the message that had followed us before. It felt as if the entire floor shook, before it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
 
“What was that?” I asked, looking around me.
 
“I don’t know,” Bolt said as she hurried up on her legs. She looked over at the PipBuck on the desk again.
 
“Can we leave now?” I walked over to the door. “Please?”
 
Bolt looked between me and the PipBuck. Her horn flared up, and the PipBuck was surrounded by the same aura. She floated it over to herself, and looked closely at it, before she dropped it in her saddlebags. “Yes, let’s go,” she said as she whirled around and hurriedly walked past me.
 
We walked quickly towards the door leading to the Overmare’s office, and when we got there, Bolt pressed the button to open it. A low rumble was heard again as the door slowly slid open, revealing the staircase behind it. This part was as clean and well-kept as the rest of the Stable had been, and it started to make me nervous. This part had been sealed, even more than the Stable itself. It had been a seal inside a seal, and yet it was as impeccably clean as the rest of this place was.
 
But Bolt didn’t seem to notice anything as she quickly walked up the staircase. Shivering slightly, I followed her up. The staircase ended in a hallway, and close to halfway through was the door that, according to the sign, lead to the Overmare’s office.
 
Without even stopping, Bolt pressed the button. Slowly, with a high-pitched screech, the door slid open. Both Bolt and I jumped back at the sudden sound, but I quickly tried to brush it off. With the desire to get out of here as quick as possible, I took a step towards the door, looking into the room beyond.
 
The room was engulfed in darkness, the only light inside the trickle that found its way through the door from the hallway and the soft green light I assumed was from a terminal. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, completely uninterrupted. I saw the outlines of something that I believed was the desk.
 
Stepping inside the room, I tried to find some light switch. After a little bit of fumbling on the wall next to the door, I found one. As I switched it on a lamp in the roof started to flicker, throwing a bleak light over the scenery.
 
The room was pretty spacious, and barely anything but a desk in the middle of the room took up the space. Upon the desk, a terminal flickered, and a vase with flowers long since withered stood next to it. On the left wall was a door like the elevator in the clinic, and on the opposite wall stood the window I had seen from the Atrium. The window had curtains covering it, blocking out any light from there. Behind the desk, on an armchair, a skeleton lay. I took a couple of steps back and nearly backed into Bolt, who still stood at the other side of the door, a hoof nervously tapping on the floor.
 
“Are you okay?” I asked as I looked back at her.
 
She quickly shook her head, before she looked up at me. “Okay? Of course I am,” she snorted as she brushed past me into the room. “A little surprised to see the dust, that’s all. You would think that the cleaning device would be able to keep all parts of the stable clean, don’t you?”
 
“I guess…” I said slowly as I walked into the room again, looking at the unicorn. “Are you sure you are okay?”
 
“I am. No need to worry about me,” Bolt said as she started to eye the room. “Let’s just try to hack the computer and get out of here.”
 
“I’m going to try and get—“
 
The screeching sound of the door closing behind me interrupted me. Once again I jumped in surprise, but this time I whirled around and looked in disbelief at the door. Bolt ran past me and started to repeatedly press the button next to the door, but without any response.
 
“What happened? What’s going on?” My heart started to beat faster.
 
“I don’t know!” Bolt screeched as she jabbed her hoof on the button a couple of times more. “It won’t open!”
 
I turned around as I heard a pinging from behind me. Before my eyes, the elevator doors started to slide open.
 

{O.o}


 


Footnote: 55% level gained
New Companion Perk: Old World Computing: Spitfire have started to get used to the security systems in the terminals. The experience have made her able to work past, or completely ignore, some elements, resulting in a 25% percent speed to the hacking. Moreover, her science has been raised by 10.

First, a really big thank you to Masquerade313, not only for proofreading and editing, but for giving the story a hell of a lot more life than it had from the beginning. I can’t thank him enough for all the time he devoted helping me with this! (Seriously, I soon have to move him to Co-Author for all his editing work with dialogues) (I suck at dialogues)

Secondly, thanks to Rising_Chaos for proofreading and listening to my never ending babbling.

Lastly, thanks to James Tonto, not only for catching a lot of awkward phrasings as well as telling me when I use bad words or something I should think about, but also for keeping me company in the docs and giving me ideas.